There’s a hole in my bucket Dear Liza was a nursery rhyme from my childhood. Liza suggests solutions to fix the hole but they all come back to the central fact that there’s a hole in the bucket.
That’s the main takeaway about current economic/political policy is that we can pour all the money we like into our collective bucket but it’s not going to fix the core failings of a debt based economic system.
One such solution put forward is Austerity
– a political policy that aims to reduce government spending through cuts, tax increases or a combination of both. In the UK the political overlords are preaching austerity – for the masses of course.
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It originates from the Ancient Greek for harshness, cruelty. Later austerity took on meaning of self-discipline and living an austere life absent of sin – like wine, women and song. During war times populations usually face austerity which can be sold to the population as a necessity to win.
Following the oil shock of 1973 the price of oil quadrupled. Countries went bankrupt and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank bailed these countries out but imposed harsh conditions for doing so. This included the end of food subsidies, removal of trade barriers, the privitisation of state enterprises and deregulation of markets/finances.
Here in the UK something similar happened under the Margaret Thatcher government. First, she stole children’s milk – then she privatised huge chunks of British infrastructure and publicly owned companies. Sold at basement bargain prices. The deregulation of animal feed standards led to Mad Cow Disease and the slaughter of over 4 million cattle.
When Thatcher took office in May 1979 she pledged to tackle inflation. To that end interest rates were raised from 12 to 17% (not to come down to 16% for nearly a year). Unsurprisingly unemployment rose from 1.5 to 3 million people.
Thatcher was the political powerhouse that drove the agenda of the Chicago Boys monetarist policy. Intellectually formed as laissez-faire it was part and parcel of the process of globalisation. Both Reagan and Bush were happy to follow in Thatcher’s footsteps. The assumption embedded in neo-conservatism is that Big Government is bad and private can do it better.
Thatcher we should note was connected to the Rothschilds through the rotten borough she represented. A search of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation (an excellent historical source btw), reveals numerous search returns for the Rothschilds. They can be identified as intimate dinner guests on multiple occasions.
I mention this because austerity measures and who demands them – seems to have more to do with banks then governments. Government's appear to impose austerity due to the banks demands, which are called structural adjustments.
Austerity packages justified by propaganda about living within our means and trimming big government.
These austerity measures are presented as a way to balance the budget. Special targets are social benefits like unemployment, disability, and old age pensions. Stringent cuts are made across social programmes, like those supporting single mothers. Meanwhile, for those working the burden of tax increases.
This budget cutting appeals to the billionaire class who know it will never apply to them! Their world is one where they can borrow extremely cheap money in order to bid up their own stock price and buy up assets on the cheap.
At the same time they want to be served by docile cheap labour. Further they plan to pay this labour in a centralised digital currency. This will allow a great deal of control over people’s finances, and people will be resticted to what they can or cannot purchase.
The deeper the cuts/ the steeper the tax hikes the more the need to control your population comes in. Despite them framing the pandemic as we’re all in this together. In this mounting economic crisis we are in there are clear winners and losers.
The excessive money printing is going almost entirely into pumping up the banks and the stock market. It’s no accident that the billionaire class have accumlated massive wealth gains in this recent period. We’re literally giving it to them – plus we, via interest on the national debt, are paying for the privilege.
The trouble is you can’t possibly balance the budget whilst your central bank is printing oodles of money. Isn’t that the quintessence of a hole in your bucket?
Source
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/a-brief-history-of-austerity-21014/
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential